Expectations
by trufflemores
Summary: Written for the lovely luminary-child, who wanted teacher!Blaine and singledad!Kurt. Klaine. COMPLETE.


**Disclaimer**: I do not own Glee or any of its characters; Ryan Murphy and Co. hold that honor. I'm simply writing this for fun, not profit.

Kurt Hummel was not in the best of moods when parent-teacher conference rolled around.

No sooner had he dropped Ellie off for her first classes than the six-year-old had decided that she didn't want to go to kindergarten anymore. It didn't matter that it had been all that she'd talked about for weeks before it started. From the moment that she had set foot in the classroom she'd decided that she didn't want to go to there anymore and had made it abundantly clear to Kurt that she wasn't happy. If Sam and Mercedes hadn't lived in town and been willing to pick her up mid-day and watch her for a few hours after school, then Kurt would never have gotten through the first week without a meltdown.

Still, even with Ellie tolerating the new arrangement for the time being, Kurt had barely found time to eat between tweaking outfits for the upcoming fashion week at Vogue and singing on the side. He couldn't afford to drop either role, but it was pushing him to his limit to manage a cantankerous six-year-old, a grueling over-time work schedule, and a cheerfully unaccommodating Broadway director all in the same period. He hoped that things would settle down soon, but even the prospect of weathering the current storm until _soon _arrived was disheartening.

He was sleeping six hours a night and nowhere near _soon _by the time the first series of parent-teacher conferences arrived. Loathe though he was to catch a subway across town for a twenty-minute meeting before taking the fastest one back to Vogue to squeeze in a few more hours of work before picking up Ellie, he wanted to meet his daughter's teacher.

Ellie had changed her tune considerably after two weeks in Mr. Anderson's class. She'd befriended most of her classmates and seemed to be thriving in both math and reading, making it a more satisfactory experience. Every night Kurt came home to a cheerful six-year-old who told him all about her day, paying particular attention to the stories that they sometimes reenacted as a class. Sometimes the stories were used to practice their math skills as characters were drawn into and taken out of the story, and other times they used to develop their vocabularies as different words were introduced and demonstrated, but mostly they seemed to be an opportunity for everyone to take a break from their desks without abandoning the learning environment altogether.

His interest sufficiently piqued, Kurt had agreed to the meeting unthinkingly four weeks ago, back when he was still scraping by with eight hours of sleep a night. Feeling considerably less charitable as he was jostled along on the subway now, Kurt wondered if it would be impolite to cancel even as he shuffled up the stairs to the busy streets, straightening his shoulders and plowing ahead gamely.

It was three o'clock exactly when he knocked on Mr. Anderson's door, his knuckles barely scraping the wood before an airy voice called out, "Come in! Door's unlocked."

Drawing in a deep breath to steel himself, Kurt eased the door open and paused in the doorway, momentarily frozen at the sight of Mr. Anderson and a set of young twins – perhaps a year or two younger than Ellie – seated on a cleared area of carpet with a stack of crayons and coloring pages around them. "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot I had one more," Mr. Anderson said apologetically, clambering to his feet as both boys looked up at him inquisitively. _Definitely younger than Ellie,_ Kurt thought, turning his attention to Mr. Anderson as he stepped forward. "Forgive me – Kurt Hummel, right?"

His smile was bright and his eyes were so hazel, such a rich whiskey color that they actually arrested Kurt's attention. It took him a long moment to grasp the hand that Mr. Anderson held out to him, shaking it once and resisting the urge to say, "You have very soft hands" immediately thereafter. He wasn't on a date, and even if he was it wouldn't exactly have been the least creepy thing to say, so he kept that thought to himself as he said instead, "Yes. I – I'm not interrupting, am I?"

"Not at all. This is Jacob and Alex," he introduced, gesturing to each of the twins in return. "I'm actually watching them for a friend. An emergency came up at work and I didn't even think about my other conference meeting. She should be here shortly." Smiling in that same warm way, he gestured with a hand towards a set of chairs at a long table near the play mat, adding, "Care to sit down?"

Kurt nodded, following him across the room while the boys continued to color, looking perfectly at ease on the carpet amid the crayons and Marvel-themed papers. Settling down into a chair, Kurt couldn't help but say, "My daughter loves Thor. She keeps asking me when she'll get a hammer."

"Every good Thor needs one," Mr. Anderson agreed, looking over at the boys and smiling fondly. "They both wanted to be Captain America for Halloween last year, but we're working our way up to being Jedis this time around." Returning his full attention to Kurt, he folded his hands neatly on the desk, the picture of professional ease, he asked, "What would you like to discuss?"

Even exhausted and slightly overwhelmed at the prospect of returning to his desk to toil away for a few more hours later, Kurt couldn't help but feel more relaxed sitting in the room, sunlight pouring in from tall windows while the boys scribbled away quietly in the background. "Why stories?" were the first words out of his mouth.

For a moment, Mr. Anderson seemed bewildered, cocking his head slightly to one side before brightening as he said, "Oh!" Then, with a slightly self-deprecating laugh, he explained, "They're amazing storytellers. I know how important it is to structure a classroom to keep everyone on target, but it's fun to let them take the lead and design their own stories, too. What I like to do," he added, reaching down to skim through his briefcase before pulling out a handful of pages, laying them out on the table top carefully, "is let them guide the creative process. I come up with a handful of scenarios, and each week we tackle a different one. We put together a script during the week and act it out on Fridays." Letting Kurt digest that for a moment, Mr. Anderson added, "It's the same interactivity that you can get from any RPG-computer program, but I like having the students be a part of the story-building process. It's more fun."

Looking down at the papers, Kurt couldn't help but be impressed at the amount of bookkeeping that went into bringing the stories to life, addressing the note "Dinosaurs?" with a laugh.

"I try to save the best for last, but if they're good, we do Dino Week early," Mr. Anderson elaborated, his own smile brightening another notch. "Of course, we do more than tell stories. We go through math and reading exercises every day, and we have practice quizzes and group quizzes every Tuesday and Thursday to reinforce what we've gone over. But we also make art and sing songs to help cement more abstract ideas. And of course there's free time and snack time and a fifteen-minute outdoor recess every day."

"And only one Mr. Anderson to handle it all?" Kurt teased.

Mr. Anderson laughed before demurring, "Please, call me Blaine. And it's not the easiest job in the world, but it's incredibly rewarding. They're_ so_ talented. They love to learn. I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher, but it just exceeded my expectations when I finally entered a classroom. It's worth every minute. And a child like yours makes it even better. She's so smart – she keeps me on my toes to provide her with interesting material."

Somewhat enchanted in spite of himself, Kurt was about to ask how Blaine _did _manage to provide the early bloomers with new material when Jacob toddled over and tugged on Blaine's pant leg. "Uncle Blaine?"

"Hey, bud," Blaine greeted, his attention almost seamlessly switching between the two as he turned to face him and asked, "what's up? Do you need more paper?"

Tugging shyly on Blaine's shirt until he leaned over to listen, Jacob confided, "I'm hungry."

"Do you want apple slices or goldfish?"

A thoughtful pause, and then Jacob said, "Goldfish."

"One moment," Blaine added apologetically in Kurt's direction, getting up and asking, "Alex, are you hungry? Do you want goldfish?"

"Yes, please," Alex said, not looking up from his purple Iron Man drawing.

Fixing them both up with a small plastic bowl half-filled with goldfish, Blaine returned to his seat a minute later and asked, "Where were we?"

"We were talking about Ellie," Kurt reminded politely, ignoring the nagging urge to hurry the conversation along and get back to work. He was tired and it was nice to listen to Blaine talk; his voice was almost melodious as he spoke, providing a soothing contrast to the constant buzz of his work desk.

He almost drifted off as he listened to Blaine talk about how she was thriving in the classroom. It wasn't that the conversation disinterested him – on the contrary – but it was nice to let go mentally as the boys crunched away on goldfish and Blaine gestured and spoke and smiled as if he couldn't be happier to share Kurt's company.

At last, however, even Kurt couldn't deny the growing need to return to his work, particularly when he was feeling so relaxed. He couldn't let himself be lulled into a complete stupor, however tempting the notion was. Still, with Blaine's attention focused so fully on him, eager to please but unhurried to fill the silence, Kurt didn't thank him for his time and depart. Instead, he couldn't help but latch onto the last point of conversation that he'd caught – something about years of experience in a show choir coming in handy – and asked, "You sing?"

"I do," Blaine admitted, reaching up almost unconsciously to rub the back of his neck. "I was part of a show choir group – the Warblers – back in high school. We never made it to the nationals' level while I was around, but we were pretty good."

"Wait." Unable to resist the question even though he knew it was a long shot, Kurt asked, "The Warblers as in the Dalton Academy Warblers?"

"You know them?" Blaine asked, surprised. A new spark of interest showed behind his eyes, like a switch being flipped after a long period of stillness. Kurt nodded, stumbling over a hasty summation of his three years in the New Directions and their triumph at Nationals his senior year, beating out the Warblers narrowly in their second year.

"I was out with the flu that year," Blaine mused, "and I would have been around my senior year but," here the spark dimmed a little, his voice sobering as he added, "the dynamic changed. A lot of my friends graduated and I ended up dropping out after a couple weeks. Not high school – just show choir. Went on to pursue a teaching degree at NYU and here I am." He smiled, the light returning as he added, "I sang in bars for a while, but it never went anywhere and I dropped that after college. Needed to settle down and find a job, anyway. Can't say I've regretted a day here." He smiled again, the sincerity evident in his eyes.

"It suits you," Kurt said, his curiosity gnawing at him. He would not ask Blaine to sing. He would not. "I wish I could have heard you sing," he added, compromising.

Blaine looked surprised for a moment, as though it didn't often occur to him that anyone would _want _to hear him sing, before he said slowly, "I still do, occasionally. When I'm not too swamped with schoolwork here. At the Spotlight Diner? I have a friend who introduced me a while ago and I haven't been able to shake the habit completely."

"You shouldn't," Kurt insisted impulsively. He couldn't imagine giving up singing – not for fashion, not for the world. "And I really would love to hear you. What time?"

"Um." Caught between flustered and pleased, Blaine rubbed the back of his neck again and said, "Eight thirty, usually? Tuesday nights."

_It's a date._ Aloud, all Kurt said was, "I'll be there. If you wouldn't mind."

"Not at all," Blaine said, his smile warm again.

Checking his time, Kurt's eyebrows jumped to his hairline as he added, "Oh my – I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to take up so much of your time." He all but tipped over his chair in his hair to get to his feet – twenty minutes had become an hour so quickly that it almost gave him whiplash – but Blaine simply joined him and held up both hands in a universally placating _it's okay._

"I don't mind," he added. "It was my pleasure."

_Mine, too, _Kurt thought, surprising himself as he reached out to take one of Blaine's hands when he lowered them, shaking it again. "Thank you," he said, remembering himself enough to be polite, at least.

"Any time," Blaine answered honestly, smiling as he released Kurt's hand. "And, uh …." Reaching down to scribble something on a notebook corner, he tore out a tiny piece of paper and handed it to Kurt, explaining, "If you have any trouble finding the Spotlight Diner, call me."

Unwilling to point out that he already knew where it was, Kurt just smiled and clasped the paper in his hand, heart in his throat as he added, "I will. Thank you."

And with that little scrap of paper clutched in his hand the entire subway ride back to Vogue, Kurt couldn't help but smile a little, typing the number carefully into his contacts before tapping out a quick message before he could lose his nerve: _Looking forward to our date on Tuesday. – Kurt._

Just when he had given up the notion that Blaine would respond at all –indeed, convinced himself that he'd been hoodwinked and that the number was miswritten or false – Kurt jumped when his phone finally vibrated on his desk an hour later.

_Me, too. :) – Blaine._

Perhaps his week was looking up, after all.


End file.
